[jwr]

That solution won't let me encrypt my backups, I think.

Incidentally, Signal is another example of an impractical solution being pushed without consideration for practical requirements. Signal will LOSE ALL YOUR DATA if your phone (iOS) dies. There is no way to backup your chat history and images. It's been like that for years and we get silly features instead of this fundamental thing.

Yes, I know many people like it this way — you are in the minority, and there should be a configuration switch saying "do not backup my data". Most people do not expect that their entire history will be gone one day. Phones die, phones get stolen, and you expect you'll get your history and photos back when restoring from an (encrypted!) backup. Not so with Signal. So the next time you tell people to use Signal over WhatsApp, don't forget to tell them that Signal will lose everything one day, while WhatsApp will not.

Back to my original point: before anyone knocks "old obsolete" apps, consider carefully if the new shiny thing really does everything that the "old obsolete" app did, is it reliable, maintained, and will it stay around for 10+ years.

[skovati]

Signal does have offline backup support though?

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007059752-Ba...

[jwr]

It does not on iOS, and the webpage you linked to specifically states that.

[jraph]

> Signal will LOSE ALL YOUR DATA if your phone (iOS) dies

I'm seeing this often on HN.

While it's a pain, it is not impractical. Most people don't care about this. They don't come back in time in the conversations.

If you really care about this. Like, you care that much. Just pair Signal Desktop and make a regular backup of your profile. All your messages and attachments are there. If your Signal ever gets borked, you can always put your machine offline and open Signal-Desktop on this backed-up folder. You can also open the db with sqlcipher and access all you data with it, the scheme is not too complicated to grasp.

Ask me how I know.

And since Signal is open source, you can always read its code in case of doubt. Someone could build a convenient UI to display or export the messages and attachments in a user-friendly format. This can happen after the backup is done and Signal breaks.

All this said, people may expect privacy when using Signal, so make sure your backups are well protected. This is the hard part, actually.

[jwr]

I think you are confirming my point. "without consideration for practical requirements"

I can tell you that my daughter cared about this. She cried for a long time when her phone just suddenly died (while charging, no reason, total loss) and her Signal history wasn't restored. I couldn't explain why Signal was the only app that didn't get backed up.

I can tell you that my friend's parents cared about this. The photos of their grandkids were suddenly gone. My fried couldn't explain the reason for this, all the other data did get backed up.

And sure, between us geeks we will keep saying "well ACTUALLY they SHOULD HAVE kept the photos elsewhere", and we'll say "this is good because it makes us more secure" and we'll say "most people don't care about this". We'll all "well actually" ourselves, while patting ourselves on the backs.

And they'll just switch to WhatsApp.

[jraph]

> I think you are confirming my point. "without consideration for practical requirements"

I don't think I am. A practical answer is: "Install Signal Desktop".

And I still think we are few who care about chat history. I'm sure there are people who care. I'm such a person.

It's also only a missing feature for iOS user, so that makes it: "of the few people who care about chat history, the minority of people who use iOS are only covered by installing Signal Desktop". A pain for these users, but they have at least two workable solutions. Using Android or installing Signal Desktop somewhere. (yes, caveat, you need to do that before losing your phone)

By yes, I agree that it would be better to have the backup feature.

[dig1]

> I don't think I am. A practical answer is: "Install Signal Desktop".

IMHO this is not always practical. Signal Desktop can easily get out of sync if you change versions and the only proper way to fix it is to clear all the local data, including your chat/contact database. AFAIK, the only source of truth is your phone.

[jwr]

> A pain for these users, but they have at least two workable solutions. Using Android or installing Signal Desktop somewhere. (yes, caveat, you need to do that before losing your phone)

"These users" don't even have a desktop computer :-)

"These users" will just use WhatsApp. It works it doesn't lose data, and everyone around them uses it anyway.